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A small network in a lab

I am proposing to create a small network at my school.It owuld be an independent stdy for some of the students who are more apt in the usage of computers. I would likesome advice on how to set up a network. I have 4 computers and a network hub. THanks alot.

It really depends on what you want to achieve. There are a number of projects I could think of that you could give them, some of them already listed by "mg".

1) You could show the principles of DNS by making one of the servers a DNS server with a fake domain like "fake-domain.org" (No registration with Verisign needed as the intention is that the users won't be trying to hit the Internet to visit "fake-domain.org"). You could then also let them use Apache to create web servers on some of the other servers. This would let them have a better understanding of how to set up DNS and associated websites. Fore example you could get them to set up www.fake-domain.org, and site2.fake-domain.org for practice.

2) You could teach them how to set up an IPTABLES firewall to help protect their webservers from attacks.

3) You could also create another domain such as "bogus-domain.org". Then you could create a mail server for each domain and try to send mail to users in both domains.

4) You could make one of the servers into a firewall router to provide access to the Internet for the other three servers.

5) You could show them how to set up Samba, NTP, DHCP for the network too.

6) You could make two of the servers into routers. You could make them route traffic between the other two "client" servers. Then you could create a VPN tunnel between the routers to also encrypt this traffic between the two clients. You probably wouldn't need the hub in this case, just cross over cables daisy chaining the servers together. The router servers would need 2 NICs.

7) You could have them add users, backup files, update software when new versions are available, look at the error logs and do other systems administrative tasks.

These are the sort of projects that easily come to mind. Details on how to do this are readily available on the web and also on this site.

The projects would also teach them how to install software and use text editors.